Today’s Sam’s Scores is yet another special edition. I had enough to do a special Gameboy Sam’s Scores, enjoy!

8) – Turn and Burn
Turn and Burn is much like Top Gun for the NES, to a point. It isn’t bad, but its far from great. I picked it up at a Goodwill just because it was cheap and it was a video game.

7) – Rechargeable Gameboy Battery
Sifting through bric-a-brac sometimes yields interesting results, and this is one such case. The Gameboy logo is worn off, but its pretty clear what this is. I’ve actually had this for a long time, avoiding adding it to a scores article because I don’t even know if it works. Even so, its a pretty cool little piece.

6) – Gameboy/GBC AC Adapter
Another thing that I find myself doing quite a bit in thrift stores is sifting through the cables and power adapters. Sometimes I come out a winner, like this time, but mostly I find myself trying to untangle a rat’s nest of stuff to come up empty handed. This thing works with both GBC and Gameboy, with a switch on the unit to get the right power to which device you need to power. Although the case is broken, it still works and with a little super glue it will be good as used.

5) – Castlevania: The Adventure
I found this one at Half Price Books, during a strange mark it at a single price and sell it period. This game, to be honest, sucks! I like Castlevania, but Konami really screwed up a good thing with this one.

4) – Pokemon Red
Way back when this game originally came out, I bought it. I loved playing this game because of it’s RPG style gameplay. I ended up loaning this game, and sadly the box and manual, to someone and never saw it again. I had always kept my eyes open for a loose copy of it and never found one less than $7, until Half Price Books got one in.

3) – Pokemon Silver
Yet another tag it and sell it score, brought to you by Half Price Books! The Pokemon Red above was exactly a week before I bought this one, so prices went down. Sadly the battery inside this one doesn’t work, but I did swap the battery in the Pokemon Gold I had, which will become a tutorial at some point.

2) – Zelda 1 and 2 for the GBA
I personally don’t think the Gameboy Advance is a vintage system, but these games certainly are. Even though they’re remakes for the system, they’re still vintage gaming classics. I must note that I bought these with another Gameboy Game (Dr. Mario, not pictured) at a Goodwill and had to wait 15 minutes for someone to go unlock the case!

1) – Green Gameboy Color
In a previous Sam’s Scores I showed you a Green GBC that I picked up off Craigslist for $10, so when I saw how cheap this one was I didn’t care whether it worked or not. I figured at the very least it would give me a matching green battery cover for my other one. When I took it home it didn’t want to work, but after shaking it, it sprang to life! The screen was scratched and it only works on batteries, later I decided to buy a new case and swap it out, so its no longer green.

4) – Yellow N64 controller
Sadly this isn’t the DK edition controller, but the yellow sure is bright. When I found it, it needed a lot of cleaning, but that is something I do to all my scores anyway. The joystick is pretty loose on this one but its overall completely functional.

3) – Gameboy Color w/ games
Over a year ago now, I passed up a Gameboy color in a thrift store because I didn’t know whether or not it worked, and to this day I wish I had bought it. I’ve been keeping my eyes open for another one at a reasonable price when I saw a Craigslist posting. The ad was a few weeks old but I took the chance. 2 days later I became the owner of a lime green GBC with Galaga/Galaxian and Yoshi’s Cookie, beside the atomic purple battery cover (at least it had one!) everything was in great shape!

2) – Beeshu Zinger
Every once in a while I will come across something so wild, I have to buy it and this is such an occasion. I own a Beeshu Zipper, so I have a little background with Beeshu’s products. I was checking out a Goodwill I had never been to before when the box (and the bright colors!) caught my eye. I picked it up and checked inside, everything but the instruction manual, if there even was one, was inside the box. This thing is a bright pink with a white cable, very strange for an NES joystick, but everything works and its just a fun piece to own.

1) – Casino Kid 2
If you’re an NES game collector, you may know Casino Kid 2 is one of the harder to find games. I’ve only seen 2 of them and this is 50% of that equation, the other was $20 or $30 at a local Disc Replay store. This particular copy had been sitting in a bin at a flea market, I knew the game was harder to find and I knew it might get snatched up at the $5 they were wanting for it. Week after week the game was still there, so I decided to take a chance and buy it, but when I got to the cash register they had a surprise for me..

4) – Age of Empires II & Sim City 2000
I’m not a huge PC gamer, but if I see titles that I know, or have wanted to check out I will buy them, if they’re cheap enough. Both of these titles are pretty big names in PC gaming. I’m well aware of what Sim City 2000 is, but I wasn’t prepared for just how awesome Age of Empires II truly was.

3) – Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 and NFS: Porsche Unleased
Here we go back to my console asylum, two Playstation games. Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 and Need for Speed: Porsche Unleased are two games I’ve enjoyed quite a bit since I bought them. I am a huge fan of Need for Speed, and I’ve played the heck out of THPS2 on my N64, so I knew I would enjoy it.

2) – World Series 2k2
World Series 2k2 on it’s own isn’t anything special, but the fact that Dreamcast games are getting harder and harder to find makes it at the very least a great deal. Everything was included and everything was in great shape, but the price was the best part of this score.

1) – Final Fantasy Origins
Final Fantasy was the very first RPG that I ever played, and the RPG that started off my love for the genre. I knew they remade it for the Playstation but I could never find a copy at a price I felt was fair, until now. This is another reason why I check the CD bins and make sure I don’t skip over titles. Although it is missing the manual, the game is the most important part (to me) and that is mainly what I paid for.

I must admit that the Master System wasn’t as high on my list of wanted consoles as say.. the NES top loader, but it was always there. As research for the system, I spent countless hours studying video game comparison for the few games that were released for both the NES and the Master System, with the Master System version almost always looking the best. I had always hoped to acquire a Sega Master System (or Power Base converter for my Genesis 1) on a vintage gaming hunt, but sadly I had only found one at Disc Replay and one at an indoor flea market, both of which were priced too high for the thrift hunter within.

Being fed up with waiting I decided to just go ahead and pay a little more than I normally would, just to own the system and see what it was all about. After spending some time with both the actual system and some emulation, just to get a feel for what the games I don’t own felt like, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the Master System. Although I now love the Sega Master System, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have it’s faults, chief among which is the pause button being built into the console, instead of conveniently on the controller.

Another issue is the standard look that almost all of the game boxes and cartridge labels have, instead of flashy artwork it all seems pretty stock and boring. Finally, and it may seem trivial, but the cartridges are pretty hard to get out of the system. There is very little sticking out to grasp on to, which seems to result in transferring sweat and grease to the cartridge’s label, which seemingly helps it deteriorate.

I do, however, quite enjoy the D-pad on the Master System’s controller, a full 8 directional, concave pad that I find to be very comfortable. The 1 and 2 buttons on the controller are large, comfortable and number 1 doubles as the Start button, again perhaps there should have been a single start/pause button (like the Genesis!), but that is well past debate. The Sega Light Phaser feels much better than the NES Zapper, and for some unexplainable reason, makes shooting games more fun!

Now lets talk about games. The Master System’s library is nearly half that of the NES, which some may think that would cut down on the junk, and you’d be wrong. The Master System does have it’s share of pure gems such as; Golden Axe Warrior, Ys, Out Run, Hang On and quite a few more, but it also had it’s share of complete trash. And when I say a game is trash, it was completely unplayable. Albeit, I was using the emulation to test most games, and I did test a few games I now own and hated them on emulation, yet love them once the controller is in my hands. Let that last sentence stand for itself.

Overall I find it sad that the Sega Master System seems to be a massively overlooked system. The games that are good, are great, but sadly the games that are bad are terrible! My only true gripe goes back to the Pause button being mounted within the console itself and not on the controller. The thrift hunter within me is mostly upset that I’ve never seen a single Sega Master System game anywhere other than Disc Replay, so snagging them at a good price is going to be impossible, but at least finding them isn’t.

Throughout the life of many gaming systems cheating has been a simple way to unlock things you’re not suppose to see yet, and sometime things you were never suppose to see at all. Cheating comes in the form of a special code entered through the controller at a certain place within the game or through cheat devices such as the Game Genie, Game Shark or the Action Replay. Whatever your chosen method, if you cheated at a game, you had way more fun than you did simply following the rules.

It is said that codes were originally used by the developers to test the game fully, without having to play all the way through. As time went on cheat codes seemingly turned into more of a bonus for the players, rather than a tool for the developers. Websites started popping up all over the internet to database these cheat codes, but as systems became out dated most sites dumped the older systems in favor of the new ones, making finding cheat codes for vintage games somewhat of a task.

I’m not saying its impossible to find the codes for the vintage games, with sites like GameWinners.com still supporting all the way back to the Atari 2600, its just harder to find the sites who have kept an accurate list of codes on their sites without removing them to make room for the newer stuff, or being overloaded with fake codes. Today I like to enjoy a game all the way through before I test out some cheat codes. There is just something about using codes to do almost anything within a game that makes it almost like a whole new game, and sometimes it literally can!

The fourth edition of Sam’s Scores is upon us and there are many more scores to show!

4) – King’s Quest VI & Lamborghini American Challenge
Admittedly, I’m not a PC gamer, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy them, I am just more of a console person. Usually while searching through CDs for misplaced or mistaken Playstation games, I often find PC games thrown in as well. There aren’t many titles I actively search for, but you never know what you’ll find in a thrift store CD bin. King’s Quest is completely new to me, but I had heard of the name before so I picked it up. Now, I’ve had a fond past with Lamborghini American Challenge release on the Super Nintendo, so I was well aware of what this game was and knew I had to have it, even though I still prefer the SNES version.

3) – Sega Genistick
The Sega Genistick is a joystick controller with integrated A, B and C buttons as well as the Start and a turbo feature, much like the Quickshot joysticks. Oddly enough, this looks almost identical to the Quickshot QS-177 for the Sega Genesis, with gray buttons instead of blue. This sat on the shelf for a week or so before I went in and bought it during a discount week, not a bad price….

2) – Mario Party 2 and WCW Mayhem N64
I’ve been buying any game I can for my N64, I love that thing! Even though some games are pretty lousy, if I get them cheap enough I don’t feel bad adding them to my collection. N64 games don’t pop up all that often at the thrift stores I frequent, but when they do I try to get my hands on them unless I already own them. If I don’t know a title, I’m not afraid to check it out because the price is always pretty inexpensive.

1) – N64 Tremor pak CIB
As always, like above, I’m on the look out for N64 accessories, controllers, memory cards, anything really. Back in the day, Performance was making accessories for anything they could and N64 was a hot ticket. When I came across one of their Tremor Paks (complete in box no less!) I was pretty excited, especially by the price. Sadly, when I brought it home the previous owner had left the batteries inside to corrode and leak, with a little cleaning and coaxing it trembled to life in my controller and everything turned out alright.

Since the NES cleaner was broken I figured it was trash, until I had a brain storm. Why not put it into a spare NES cartridge and make it look like an NES game? Genius! At least I thought so.

I decided to use my (non-converter bearing) Gyromite cartridge for the cleaner’s new home, as it had done nothing but take up space anyway. I first removed the game’s ROM board and then modified the cleaning head to fit inside the cartridge. I also had to modify the cartridge to allow the whole thing to close properly. Everything went smoothly and turned out great.

This is a simple project if you have both items laying around, and it only took me about 10 minutes. If I had the right tools it may have taken less, but the success was the main goal and that is what I achieved. All I need to do now is remove the Gyromite label and replace it with my own concoction.

Wait, did I just say NES games in a Gameboy case? Yes, yes I did! Somewhere among my childhood I had acquired four Gameboy cases that were the same size as the NES (clam shell) cases.

The camera washed out the colors terribly, they're actually "1990's" LOUD!

I forget exactly where I got them and with all the local NES games that were floating around back then I could have gotten them from anywhere, but the fact is that I still have them. It came to me one night that I had a collection of game manuals stashed away inside one of them, so I started ripping through boxes to find out where they were. After I found them a whole new level of amazement dawned on me, which for some reason never dawned on me before, that I had never seen these things before and haven’t seen any since.

What I find remarkable is that these things are the exact same size and color as their NES counterparts, but emblazoned on the front is a black Gameboy logo, instead of Nintendo. Inside the case were 4 tiny corners, clearly cut out to fit a Gameboy game cartridge. I’m going to make a bold assumption that these were produced to accommodate the Gameboy players who wanted to keep the manuals with their games, as the manuals fit better in these cases than they would the smaller ones, obviously!

Size comparison

Sadly NES games wouldn’t fit inside these cases without a little modification, which I eventually did. Looking back I wish I hadn’t, but I needed more NES cases because I had plenty of the tiny Gameboy clam shells. You can still see the remnants of the corners that held the Gameboy game, but NES games and their manuals fit perfectly, although they do slide around a bit (sans the protection the Nintendo version afforded).

A little hard to see, so I tried to point them out.

I can’t find information on these cases anywhere, so I have no clue how many were made and how many different colors were available. To my knowledge there may only be 4 different colors because I have been fooled by VHS cases that are the exact same colors as these, while gaming hunting, but I’ve never seen anymore for the Gameboy. I would love to own a full set of these (unmodified!), although I probably won’t use them for Gameboy games, I just want to own them because I find them fascinating.